


First Kiss

by femharel



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, F/M, First Kiss, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kissing, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femharel/pseuds/femharel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is twelve when she kisses him. Cullen has only just learned the difference between kisses goodnight and kisses in the morning, between parents, other parents, and children in the gardens after school, who press roses into one another’s hair, and return the next day mottled with bruises and thorns. There are kisses on the nose and kisses on the cheek—then suddenly, there are kisses on the mouth, kisses that are favours, but kisses that are earned. Kisses are, he imagines, as tender as the wax from kitchen candles—which Cullen prods with adolescent thumbs, bringing the red to his mouth, briefly, imagining the texture of girlish lips, and the one who might bestow him such melted affections.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Kiss

**I**

He is twelve when she kisses him. Cullen has only just learned the difference between kisses goodnight and kisses in the morning, between parents, other parents, and children in the gardens after school, who press roses into one another’s hair, and return the next day mottled with bruises and thorns. There are kisses on the nose and kisses on the cheek—then suddenly, there are kisses on the mouth, kisses that are favours, but kisses that are earned. Kisses are, he imagines, as tender as the wax from kitchen candles—which Cullen prods with adolescent thumbs, bringing the red to his mouth, briefly, imagining the texture of girlish lips, and the one who might bestow him such melted affections.

It happens on a Sunday. Cullen has just returned from the bakery, carrying hot breads to his mother for supper, when she calls to him. The girl is standing at the statue in Honnleath’s square, calling him over with an insistent nod, another nod, and then, at last, by walking towards him and tugging Cullen over by the hood of his newly-cleaned shirt.

“What is—Can I be of any assistance, Sophia?” Cullen asks. Sophia Lerwick: also age twelve, pretty, blonde hair, with a broken nose she’d won in a scuffle with Marion Holt (age thirteen, still pretty, but ‘a shrew,’ to quote the less shrewly Sophia). Comparatively, Sophia is almost a friend, more of a mystery, and drawing ever closer to Cullen’s young mouth.

“Maybe,” she answers him. “I have a problem.”

“O-Oh?” But Cullen has begun to withdraw from her, back scrapping on the stone in some noble attempt to escape—although the girl interrupts before he can climb to its top.

“I like you,” she says.

"What?”

“I like you.” Cullen will remember many years later that Sophia says just that, I like you, without explanation, before claiming his collar and pulling him down (as she was smaller than he was, although round in the cheeks—pink, and breathless, as though she’d always just been for a run)—and she kisses him.

Now, the girl kisses _him_ , mind you. Cullen Stanton Rutherford is a gentleman—and a Templar, someday, he hopes—and would not impose unnecessary attentions on a lady who does not invite them in turn. She is the one who is bold: tasting warmly of cinnamon, and mouthing a light ‘I like you’ into the meld of Cullen’s white chin. When she is done, Cullen watches her, baffled, mouth bubbled, contemplating ways in which he might respond. Ultimately, he says, “T-Thank you for your consideration,” before offering a shake of his hand.

Sophia does not shake it.

“Well,” she says, “do you like me back?” The twelve-year-old Cullen supposes that he must. He has not considered it prior to this moment, but Sophia is nice and Sophia _has kissed him_. Like in the stories, in which the women sleeps and the knight climbs through her window, bestowing a peck to slumbering lips, hoping she might wake up to love him. The boy leans against Wilhem’s statue, bread crushed at his feet, thinking the world of Sophia’s dappled skin and the colour of her honey-spun hair: she, the girl who has given Cullen his very first kiss.

“I guess,” Cullen answers. “I mean—I, sure, I-I could like you.” _A kiss!_

When Cullen turns thirteen two weeks later and leaves for Templar training, it is Sophia who kisses him again, and gives him a piece of her golden-lit hair, which Cullen will keep with him until reaching the Tower, where he will be stripped of his belongings and told to forget everything he knows of his home. So Cullen does forget, eventually: he forgets about the statue in the square and the girl with muddied hands, who had kissed him and said that she liked him, and Cullen had thought he’d loved her back.

 

**II**

The first time he sees her, Cullen falls in love. Well, no, not in love—of course not in love, only girls believe in love at first sight, don’t they?—so no, not in love: but Cullen has fallen in something. Last Tuesday, it was in a puddle of lyrium, from vials he had spilled on his walk to the stock room, seeing her there—a staff in hand, twirling the thing like it might be the thing that was magic, and not her—so bright, laughing, excited at the prospect of fire (as he knew he was, too, and shouldn’t be, at least not with her).

Surana is not only an elf but a mage: and one of his care. As a Templar, it is Cullen’s duty to protect her: if not from demons then from himself, and the power of what he might do. Yet, still, Cullen watched her demonstration and dropped those vials of lyrium on the Circle’s clean floor, where Cullen promptly slipped, cursed, blushed, and rose to excuse himself to the library (although Cullen hadn’t been able to remember the direction of the library, and ended up haunting the corridors like some half-addled ghost). It only mattered that Cullen might get away from her and the familiar sight of her smile.

Cullen does not love her, of course. He can’t love her. It is merely infatuation: illicit and ill-advised. But Cullen is eighteen and, as his sisters have repeatedly informed him, eighteen-year-old boys are stupid and meant to break rules. It can be said that because Cullen aabstainsfrom the second, and keeps to the Order, he is his minor teenaged follies. He can watch Surana as he does now, sitting at her desk. He can wonder at the shape of her ears and the curve of brown fingers, which curl inside of tomes as she might in his hair, tugging at the strands, bringing him down to her, her thin mouth pliant, electric, and smooth… Kissing her would be… Kissing her is—

“Soooo.”

Cullen jumps at the intrusion, ashamed not only for being startled but for losing himself once in thoughts that, exposed, might demean the woman in his charge. It is Amell, of course, who surprised him—Aed, he believes is the name—a known troublemaker among his peers, infamous for his late-night ‘study sessions’ in the corridors and the one time he turned the Circle shelves into flying contraptions, which he’d used to race his fellow mages from the top to the bottom of the Tower. They do not speak of what had happened at the bottom of the Tower. It is best for Cullen, for everyone, to forget.

Cullen scowls now at the other, red-faced, and humiliated, but the mage only smiles in return, the lesser at fault between the two of them.

“I guess you wouldn’t be into Jowan then?”

“Ex—” Cullen valiantly clears his throat. “Excuse me?”

“My mage friend. I’m trying to set him up with someone, but you seem to be—”

“That would be quite inappropriate, Amell, by all accounts, for many reasons, that is—that has nothing to do with what you said after, that I would—that I would like—I am a Templar,” Cullen stresses. “I am here to serve and protect you. You’re a talented mage. It does you no credit to stir up rumours and pair off those within the Order, wrangling Templars into your…” _Sex games._ Cullen does not say this aloud.

“I apologise,” he mumbles, “but I do not favour the company of men.”

“So, you’d prefer Surana?”

_He—_

Amell laughs. “I’m kidding! You should see the look on your face. Calm down,” he adds. “Templars are so boring.”

Cullen will later compare _that look on his face_ to unfavourable fruits: the insides of pomegranates he’s never had the opportunity to taste, or the outer peel of a red apple, smashed to the floor. It does not change the fact that Amell was right, of course: had Cullen the chance, the courage—no, the _impunity_ —he would have said yes to Amell’s request. ‘Yes, please tell me how I might approach her, how I could kiss her, how I might make her mine.’ Cullen holds only memories of kisses, young, and feeble in his use of tongue. He has grown into manhood with little more knowledge than handshakes. He has questions: what would he do if he could kiss her? And what would he say after she fell into him, and he told her of his thoughts? His desire? ‘Please, no, do not be afraid. I would never hurt you. I adore you. You have no reason to fear me.’

 

**III**

“You’re afraid of me,” it tells him, dressed in the skins of his fallen companions—his _friends_ , now dead, lips blown open like they might have been smiling, their final thoughts some prayer of a lover getting down on their knees. _Enough. Enough._ Cullen is begging the demon to grant him his relief. The demon is not lying, however: even in blood, drenched to the nines in blackened intestines, the creature is beautiful. Its flesh looks ripe, ethereal, beneath her skin-coats, and purple like the fissure of a wound. Its throat is exposed and long like a half-moon. Its breasts are cut like marble slabs. And Cullen wants her. _He needs her._ He wants to—

“Enough!” Cullen screams it this time. If there is blood on its body, there is blood on him, too, and bones that have been powdered like frescos, less neatly applied. Cullen can taste his friends inside of his mouth, inside of him. Cullen can relish in the sweetness of Templars’ burned bodies, and mages’, too—and behind them all, the metallic blossom of his lust. As to sound, Cullen can hear only weeping. With everyone dead, he assumes it’s his own. The demon does not heed him, however. It comes closer to the barrier, arms outstretched (naked! beautiful!), fingers slick with stomach juices and the wet of former lovers, too late into their sins for the Maker to redeem them now. _All of them: dead._

“You should kiss him for me.” The demon brings friend’s corpse to his barrier, held aloft by the remains of what-would-be-his-neck. Cullen’s friend’s face is not a face but an impression of a landslide, newly burned, half his skin in disrepair, slopped like porridge, looking like a meal. The demon tells Cullen to taste him.

“Kiss him,” it demands of him. The corpse’s mouth is rancid and it smells of dark cherries. The rotted cheek fizzles like a drought of black beer. _And Cullen wants to—_

“Stop,” he begs, voice cracked, broken. Cullen was wrong. He isn’t a soldier. He isn’t a Templar. Cullen is only a child; he is child who wants to go home. “Stop it. Stop!” It is a small miracle that he does not fail then. She—it tells him that she would stop, if he kissed her—and the desire to do so, to _stop_ it, stop, scorches in Cullen’s wrecked throat, his lungs, in his liver and his heart skin. It is conflagration and need. Cullen is swollen and Cullen is empty. He is dying. Cullen is about to—

“Kiss me, instead, then,” it offers. Cullen yells harder. _Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!_

“Oh darling, it’s only a kiss.” Mouths, hands. Bodies, moving, sweating, seething. Fizzling like meat on the flames. It can be over. She can be his. He can kiss her and have her, and take her down like a glass of thickened water, as though she’s an ocean, although, Cullen knows he will never have enough. He would drown inside her; Cullen would—“Don’t you want to kiss me?”

 _Stop. It’s only a kiss. Stop. It’s only a kiss. It will only take just one kiss._ All the while, Cullen imagines plunging his sword into mages’ hateful throats. _Enough, enough, enough._

 

**IV**

“Are you sure you’ve had enough?” she asks him.

Cullen chuckles, stumbling (only slightly) into the doorframe of the unknown house, the woman not far behind him, breathing closely to his hot neck. Cullen is drunk, because of course he is drunk. He would not be here otherwise, and he knows this, knew this when he was sober, when he followed her—Emily, her name is Emily—Emily from the bar’s table, through its smoke, walking through the fog that has settled over Kirkwall like the remnants fire pit. Only the night is less warm than a fire pit, and the woman has taken to placing her hands (cold from the journey) on Cullen’s chest (sticky, beating), that she might warm them.

Emily has settled into her stranger’s jawline, finding his buckles with less than a mild temper but a solid resolve, a similar patience to the one Cullen has learned in his many years in the Order. He isn’t shaking when she laughs, but he does tremble, only briefly, when she kisses him first and she tastes unfathomably like carrots, whiskey, and overdone soup. Her hair is still soft, however, thick and tempered like lamb’s wool. It is not unpleasant, so he kisses her back. He kisses her.

“You said,” she says, “that you’d come in for a drink.”

“So I did.” Flirting is simple, clean. Outside, passerbys sound like ghosts, waiting for someone to find them. He ignores them.

"And a kiss?" Emily has locked the front door now. Her lipstick is orange on the round of her chin.

"I am kissing you, my lady."

"Anything more?"

“I am a Templar,” he slurs, “a champion of the devout. I would like to think I am a man of my word.” Cullen isn’t though, not really. Sometimes, he thinks, words mean nothing at all.

He is kissing her, as promised, but it is not done with the passion he avowed. Cullen wants to be truthful, to say ‘yes, I will kiss you’ and kiss her well, but his lips do not feel her lips when she moans his name to hem; he only hears teeth. Cullen does not feel her body as he should, although she wrangles beneath his large hands like a cart careening down a hill, up, down, forward. She is content, and Cullen is, too. It’s just… It is… It is not how Cullen thought kissing should be, once. But perhaps this is just what kissing is, at least for him. It is the midnight stumble of two drunk bodies: two parties made equal in their counterpart lust, an unspoken agreement between the two to take, to greed, filling out their inside bits with fingers and tongues, like the muscle might mean something other than loneliness. It should be enough for him. It is enough. (He has always had enough.)

It is enough to kiss her, at least, to undress her of her clothes, and carry them both to their sins (‘kiss me, kiss me,’ the demon demands, which Cullen will remember come morning, when he is sober and naked, laboured with earlier guilts). Cullen will clothe himself, later, return to his home, drink lyrium, duty, duty, duty, and he will not think of his burdens any longer. That is, until the next dark turn, when he will re-enter a tavern, angry, but not-quite angry enough to release his hold on the glass. This is better than hatred, he thinks. It is softer. When he kisses them, foolishly, Cullen can almost pretend that he’s falling in love.

 

**V**

Little by little, Cullen is kissing her. If he is terrified, it is not how he remembers fear. Fear is vicious, feral. Fear like this has somehow developed a different mould, as though, at any moment, Cullen might fall from some invisible edge. As for reasons for his panic, it is not something so easily placed. It is not as though the Commander doesn’t have experience, because he does have experience (although not all of them are experiences he cares to recall). That is not the problem, however. Although, it occurs to him that Cullen has never experienced kissing like this.

They have taken to his office like dangerous children, playing their ancient curiosities, daring the other to go just a bit farther, discovering what human bodies can do. Mouths: rolling like ocean rides. Hands: oddly tender, patiently firm. Stomachs: devoted to the other like they are of one flesh, and yearning to breach the proximities of outer fabrics, passing to skin. Verena is pitching into him. Cullen is reaching back. Cullen Rutherford is kissing Verena Trevelyan with eagerness, but also with care. If he is terrified, therefore, he does not understand what for. (But he is terrified, and it is a fear that almost feels… good.)

What is it? Verena is beautiful, but Cullen has been with beautiful women. Not that they matter. Verena has dark eyes, toasted skin, a mouth shaped like the bud of a rarer flower, but it does not deter him. Cullen is not so insecure that he would dismiss her affections for looks she can’t control. That would be a defect of desire. They are not so little as that. It is only…

"Is something wrong?" she asks him, eyes still lidded, teeth clean from… activity. Verena is perceptive, one of her many qualities (although Cullen would not tell her this now, boast the ego lest she swell up and blow away—her pride is barely kept on a good day). Cullen shakes his head, but sighs when she does not continue. He has been given the space to feel embarrassment, which he supersedes by hugging her to him, so she does not misunderstand.

“It isn’t you,” he explains.

“Well, I certainly hope so, or else someone might need to find another job come morning.”

Cullen laughs.

"You wouldn’t."

"Just try."

But what should he say? When he doesn’t understand it himself? Sometimes, it feels as though Cullen has been awake his whole life, barely at rest. Other times, Cullen feels shrouded in darkness, drugged, barely living life at all. As though he might as well be dead. If he is to remain an addict, he supposes that Verena is a better substance to bear: away from that sleeping, away from his dreams. Lightly, she begins treading her fingers in his wheat-blonde hair. Selfishly, she is nuzzling into the hollow of his throat.

"Are you alright?" she asks him again. "You know that you can tell me if you’re hurting."

Verena is noble but she does not make him feel common. Verena is softer than most people. She is quieter, somehow. She makes him feel quiet, when she holds his hands in her hands, when she touches his mouth to her mouth. When she holds him, he does not feel pain.

Kissing her is not a chore, or a habit, or a reminder of false memories: kissing her is a blessing, somehow, fragile, but beloved. It is simple, like tucking fresh sheets into the bedside. Cullen feels like an anchor might feel in a storm. Above water, the ship is useless, wrecked; beneath, the boat is stilled all the same, tethered miraculously to solid ground. Silently, he returns a kiss to her hand, as his heart tiptoes further into falling in love.

"It is nothing," Cullen whispers, "truthfully." Truthfully, he whispers it.

If the man is terrified, it is not because when he kisses her, properly, she is the one who kisses him back.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for emegustart, featuring her Warden, Aed Amell, and Inquisitor, Verena Trevelyan — you should all check out her beautiful art, as well as her Dragon Age comics at emegustart.tumblr.com; she is absolutely wonderful


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